The magnetic-recording, hard-disk-drive (HDD) industry is extremely competitive. The demands of the market for ever increasing storage capacity, storage speed, and other enhancement features compounded with the desire for low cost creates tremendous pressure for manufacturing economies. Therefore, any cost savings that can be found in the manufacturing process attracts significant attention on the part of engineers assigned the task of manufacturing these complex devices.
With the arrival of perpendicular-magnetic-recording (PMR) technology, the pressure for low-cost manufacturing has gained even greater importance due to the complex manufacturing processes and challenging design characteristics of components used in PMR HDDs. In particular, PMR heads have attracted significant attention from the HDD engineering community, because the asymmetry characteristics of PMR heads can have a significant impact on the yield of HDDs incorporating such technology. Therefore, lowering the cost of manufacturing PMR HDDs that incorporate PMR heads is of paramount importance for maintaining a competitive edge in the HDD manufacturing business.